Examining the robustness of ideological voting: Evidence from the confederate house of representatives

A majority of work on Congressional voting behavior finds that members of C ongress establish ideological positions and maintain them throughout the en tirety of their careers, regardless of how their career aspirations, politi cal positions, or underlying constituencies change. Based on this evidence, Poole (1998) concludes that members of Congress "die in their ideological boots." I examine the robustness of the "ideological-boots thesis" more clo sely, using vote-scaling techniques and roll-call voting data from a differ ent American legislative system: the Congress of the Confederate States of America. Initial results run contrary to the ideological-boots thesis, as I uncover low levels of cross-system stability among members who moved from the U.S. House to the Confederate House. Examining further, I argue that hi gh levels of ideological stability follow from a strong party system being in place to structure voting, which has traditionally been the case in the two-party U.S. House but was not the case in the partyless Confederate Hous e. This result aside, I do find a moderate but increasing level of ideologi cal stability among members of the Confederate House in a session-by-sessio n analysis, which is robust to a serious "shock" (Federal invasion) to the constituency-representative linkage underlying the electoral connection. Th is latter finding suggests that as long as there are electoral incentives a ssociated with ideological labels, then ideologies will develop, regardless of party structure.